“Nigeria Health Insurance Remain Low With Only 5% of 208m Population Covered”

Adedayo Akinwale in Abuja

The African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) has revealed that Nigeria’s health insurance coverage remains alarmingly low, with less than five per cent of its 208 million population enrolled as of 2022.

Recall that Nigeria’s National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) was launched in 2005 to shield households from the financial burden of out-of-pocket health payments.

But presenting a research output on Thursday in Abuja at the AERC and Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER) policy dialogue on human capital development project in Nigeria, themed, “Leveraging Economic Development Through Human Capital In Nigeria: The Roles of Foreign Direct Investment and Health”, Dr. Terrence Kairiza emphasized that despite being mandatory for formal workers in both public and private sectors, the NHIS has only managed to cover less than five per cent of Nigerians by 2022.

He stressed that Nigeria as the most populous country in Africa has a vast pool of potential human capital of over 200 million people with over one-third of them comprising the youths has vast potential to take advantage of the import of human capital in the development nexus.

Terrence noted that the growth of the country was not consistent with the human capital potential of the country.

Terrence stated: “Nigeria’s health insurance coverage remains alarmingly low, with less than 5 per cent of its 208 million population having any form of health insurance.

“Uptake varies across states, but is largely concentrated in major business hubs. The uptake of insurance is also higher for the formal sector versus the informal sector.

“Private health insurance, particularly employer-based insurance, is the most prominent type of health insurance among Nigerians. Nigeria’s overall health insurance uptake pattern mirrors the private health insurance uptake across States.

“Employer based insurance accounted for 94 per cent of private health insurance uptake across Nigerian States as of 2018.”

Terrence noted that government efforts to make health insurance compulsory for all citizens are commendable, but the results have been modest, especially for informal sector workers and women.

He said to boost uptake, policies should tackle both supply and demand sides of health insurance.

Terrence was of the opinion that supply side policies could focus on, offering subsidies to informal sector workers and women to reduce premium costs, developing low-cost, limited benefit insurance products and creating online platforms for insurance enrollment and management.

He said on the other hand, demand-side policies should concentrate on educating informal sector workers about health insurance benefits, streamlining enrollment processes and encouraging group insurance for informal sector associations.

Earlier, the Executive Secretary, NISER, Prof. Antonia Simbini said the policy dialogue was to share preliminary research findings and policy implications of the research output on the human capital development project in Nigeria.

She added that it was critical to have a stakeholder engagement to share the findings and allow comments before the research is published.

She stressed that NISER was established since independence as Nigeria’s on social and economic issues.

Simbinie said the responsibilities of the agency include the conduct of research for government at national, as well as state level.

Also, the Delivery Manager for the Central Coordination Unit under the office of the Special Adviser to the President on Policy, Osagie Uyi-Aivinhenyo, expressed concern that unless the steep rate for the insurance scheme is addressed, patients will continue to snub it.

He said: “I discovered recently, when I took some people in their 40s to register them for health insurance with some Health Management Organisations, that the rates are too expensive. This is probably why many Nigerians, especially low-income earners, are discouraged and refuse to come on board.

“So if the health insurance cannot even cover treatments for critical cases, it becomes discouraging. Again, some patients may not want to access it because they know they can’t afford to pay for quality care.

“One of the key issues the Ministry of Health is tackling is the expansion of the health insurance scheme. You can imagine that our target for 2024 is just around 18 million people. This connotes that the target we are even setting for ourselves is too low. We urge the government to do something.”